Political commentary in Dallas is a lot like the City itself – a lot of bluster, but too often, very little substance.
There’s a lot of name calling, but very little analysis. There’s a lot of doctrine – both on the left and right – but very few attempts to find a solution.
There are a lot of long, ponderous pieces printed and televised by people in suits, but only meager attempts made to produce comment the rest of us can understand.
Dallas’ inability to deal honestly with itself is obvious to anyone who has noticed that Jim Schutze, the City’s best political commentator, doesn’t have anywhere to comment.
This is a fact of life I try to keep in front of me every time I write this column – which I have done every month for the past three years. At the Advocate, we pride ourselves on being different, and I hope this space has been different from the rest of the stuff in town – that there hasn’t been any mudslinging or pomposity or ivory tower logic.
Because that’s why I do what I do; why I pound out these 600 words each month. I try to cut through the bluster and the swagger and the silliness and explain how a particular event affects East Dallas.
And if the result hasn’t been especially nice (which has happened entirely too often during the past three years), I hope my analysis helps the regular readers of this space make up their own minds about what to do about it.
I don’t mince words, and I don’t shy away from the facts, and I’m not afraid to name names. This aggravates a lot of people, who would rather believe that ignorance will cure their problems. A real estate developer once took me to task, claiming that it would be that much harder to bring retail to East Dallas since I had pointed out in a column that we didn’t have enough of it.
On the other hand, I don’t embellish the facts. This, in our tabloid day and age, is a much more impressive achievement than it should be. I have become tired of reading pieces and trying to figure out who owes who a favor.
But with me, you can accept this as the gospel: I have no hidden agendas, no axes to grind, no scores to settle. My first and only concern is for East Dallas, and for the people who have their homes and their families here.
Because almost everyone who lives here – whether in the M Streets or Hollywood Heights or Lakewood or Abrams-Brookside – has the resources to live somewhere else.
I like to think they choose to live here because they believe in East Dallas. That is the kind of attitude that should not only be defended, but rewarded.
I can’t do much about the latter. I can, however, do a lot about the former, and I’m going to keep doing it. Unfortunately, there are still entirely too many people who don’t believe that the residents of East Dallas should have a say about what happens in their neighborhoods. I’m going to keep reminding those people – whether they be cold-hearted City bureaucrats or real estate developers out to make a quick buck or the unwitting among us – that we have something special here, and that we’re not going to let someone without a stake here ruin it.
A couple of years ago, a former City Councilman asked me how I got away with writing what I write. My answer to him: I don’t get away with anything.
It’s the others – the name callers and the arrogant and the doctrinaire – who have gotten away with something for years.
That something is not doing their jobs as well as they can, and there is no bigger crime than that.
